Friday, August 11, 2017

People sometimes call these the dog days of summer but I prefer to employ the more positive Simon and Garfunkel paraphrase, August, Rock She Must. The month traditionally has a lot going on in the Chicago area, and 2017 is no exception. In the next few weeks, we have a power pop showcase with Dwight Twilley, Pezband, and Shoes at The Arcada in St. Charles; Fest For Beatles Fans and Wizard World Comic Con Chicago in Rosemont; and YippieFest and The Chicago Air And Water Show taking place in the city.

The 41st Annual Fest For Beatles Fans - Chicago comes to the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in suburban Rosemont this weekend. The event presents musicians, authors, artists, photographers, and music biz people who have some connection to to the most famous band in rock history. See yesterday’s post for more information.

The Arcada Theatre in St. Charles presents three power pop legends tonight with Pezband, Shoes, and Dwight Twilley. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. See my Wednesday night post for more information. Note: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Cliff Johnson and The Raine will not be performing as part of the show tonight.

YippieFest, a three-day celebration of theatre, comedy, music, puppets, and other forms of entertainment set for next weekend, August 18 – 21 at Prop Thtr. The people behind this brand new event are veterans of the Abbie Hoffman Died For Our Sins festival that Mary-Arrchie Theatre hosted for 30 years.

When Wizard World Comic Con Chicago returns to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont August 24 through 27, it will be particularly interesting for Doctor Who fans. David Tennant, Alex Kingston, John Barrowman, Catherine Tare, and Jenna Coleman will be on hand. Fans of the TV shows The Walking Dead; Arrow; Firefly; and Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. will also find some of their favorite stars there. I’m hoping to post more on this in the near future.

Jackson Browne and Greg Leisz are performing a Benefit For Veterans For Peace this Sunday night at the Copernicus Center in Chicago’s Jefferson Park neighborhood.

California residents will have an opportunity to hear two famous and very funny British men conversing now that tickets are on sale for the John Cleese with Eric Idle Live Talks Los Angeles show at The Alex Theatre. The Monty Python duo will be discussing Cleese’s book So, Anyway . . .

Monty Python fans in the Chicago area can see Neil Innes at Fest For Beatles Fans this weekend at the Hotel in Rosemont. Innes is a musician/comedian who worked quite bit with the Pythons, and was a driving force behind the Beatles parody act The Rutles.

The 23rd Annual Black Harvest Film Festival continues at the Gene Siskel Center in downtown Chicago and runs through the end of the month.

The American Ska-Thic festival will celebrate its 25th Anniversary next Saturday, August 19 at Metro. MU330, Coolidge, The Eclectics, Detroit Rude Boy Society, Skapone, Tango Wedding Band, and DJ Chuck Wren will be performing.

Also, next Saturday, Chicago venue The Elbo Room is sponsoring the ninth annual I Am Fest – International Art and Music Festival. The day-long event will actually be held at the more spacious The House Of Blues and feature music acts, art, and photography. The Smoking Popes, Sin Anestesia, and Littlebirds are scheduled to perform.

Tributosaurus will performing Tom Petty songs at the Taste Of Polonia Festival in Jefferson Park on September. The critically acclaimed tribute act, which use a rotating lineup of musicians, has honored Petty in the past.

Jefferson Park will also be the home of the Chicago Fringe Fest, which takes place in various venues around the northwest side neighborhood on two weekends, starting August 30. There’s a Preview Party on August 30 at the Copernicus Center.

We’ve recently had Stephen Stills and Graham Nash doing separate shows in Chicago, and now David Crosby is on his way. His David Crosby and Friends concert comes to City Winery Chicago on 10 - 30. Other upcoming shows at City Winery include Rusty Young with Poco on 10-25; The Alarm on 8-28, and Living Colour on 9-3.

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About This Blog

Broken Hearted Toy is an eclectic celebration of creativity, with over 1,900 posts since 2009.

It's based in Chicago and covers power pop, garage, cutting-edge, and 1960s rock; along with occasional bits on art; literature; and theatre.

Top of the hill is a nice place to be at. - - - "Elevated Observations" by The Hollies.

Check out some of my other creative endeavors.

Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff is a weekly Internet show created by and starring Jeff Kelley. It mostly consists of comedy bits and obscure 1960s garage rock set to vintage TV and film clips but also spotlights entertainment events around Illinois.

Over the past few years, my wife Pam and I created a handful of series (each episode was about two minutes long) that were shown on Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff. They included Manchester Gallery (see description below); Old Days, which I hosted in the persona of a cranky old man named Fritz Willoughby; Roving Reporter, where I played the clueless title character; What's With Terry?, a performance arts program; and Hanging With The Hollies, a takeoff on Breakfast With The Beatles.

I've also worked with Kelley and contributors Willy Deal and David Metzger on comedy clips. Jeff just kicked off a new season of Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff, with some cool graphics to go with his new regular features. Willy Deal is onboard, and I'm hoping to join them for some creative endeavors in the near future.

I'm particularly proud of this 21-episode comedy series Pam and I created for Sunday Morning Coffee With Jeff. Each installment was a few minutes long, and featured me portraying Terrence, the curator of a pop culture museum.

My original concept was to make up funny descriptions for some of the rock memorabilia I've collected, but it soon morphed into a sit-com format where my character's inept and devious ways constantly got him into trouble. The two running themes that fueled the action concerned a purloined Beatles button, and the scrambled eggs Paul McCartney was eating when he got the inspiration to compose "Yesterday."

I'm currently exploring options for pitching my Manchester Gallery web-based series to a media company that could help it reach a much larger audience.

This Chicago-based magazine has been covering rock music for close to 40 years, and has a readership of 165,000. I started contributing in 1987 and have written several feature stories and far too many album reviews to count. The Illinois Entertainer can also be found in an online edition.

After starting Broken Hearted Toy a few years back, I asked I.E.'s editor and publisher if I could post material that I had previously written for their publication, and they graciously granted me permission to do so.

Chicago Art Machine was a web-based publishing company run by Editor-in-Chief, Kathryn Born, and Managing Editor, Robin Dluzen, that included Chicago Art Magazine, Chicago DIY Film,Chicago Performance And Trailers, and TINC. Most of my submissions appeared in Chicago DIY Film and Chicago Performance And Trailers, although I contributed to all the online Chicago Art Machine publications.

Unfortunately, Chicago Art Machine has folded. I greatly enjoyed working with Kathryn and Robin, and I'm glad to see they've gone on to other projects in the arts and journalism. I hope to work with them again at some point in the future.

I was a writer and performer with this local comedy group from 1989 to 2009. Amusical parody I wrote about Arthur Andersen's Enron crisis was covered by the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, and other publications.

Famous In The Future continues to perform in the Chicago area, and has appeared at every one of the Abbie Hoffman Died For Our Sins theatre festivals that are held each August at the Mary-Arrchie Theatre. Abbie Hoffman Died For Our Sins will celebrate its 25th Anniversary in August, 2013.

Famous In The Future has a musical side project called The Rut, which occasionally plays at concert events organized by whitewolfsonicprincess, a band that's an offshoot of Black Forest Theatre.

I'm an active member of SCBWI, (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) and have written two Middle Grade fantasy novels that I'm shopping to literary agents. I've finished a mystery/satiric novel that takes place amidst Chicago's alternative music scene in the mid-1980s.

Broken Hearted Toy

The blog title comes from the line, "I'm the brokenhearted toy you play with" in the song "I Can't Let Go" by The Hollies. One of the great original British Invasion bands, The Hollies continue to have an immense influence on power pop bands to this day, and have finally been inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Here is a video of "I Can't Let Go" being performed in 1966.